Rogue River: The Texas Anthem Series: Book 4

By Kerry Newcomb

The captain was a madwoman with a scattergun. The soldiers were a whore, a surveyor's assistant, a writer, a crusty old Irishman, two murderous brothers, a criminal, and a county hunter. And the only way out of the mountains was on a frigid river that flowed toward the Missouri--a river running with blood.

Texas-born Cole Anthem was the bounty hunter. He had followed an outlaw right into the middle of a major Indian uprising and a battle that turned into a slaughter. Now Cole and the other survivors of a raging Cheyenne war are taking the only chance they have: riding a woman's keelboat toward safety. But up and down the Rogue, a glory-mad chief hasn't given up. His warriors are armed and waiting--to spill the white men's blood...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Apr 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781429978729

Kerry Newcomb

Kerry Newcomb was born in Milford, Connecticut, but had the good fortune to be raised in Texas. He has served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and taught at the St. Labre Mission School on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. Mr. Newcomb has written plays, film scripts, commercials, liturgical dramas, and over thirty novels under both his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. He lives with his family in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

DENVER, 1875

Miss Glory Doolin checked her gun first, and then her makeup. After all, a woman had to have her priorities in order.

The gun was a .36-caliber, single-action Navy Colt, its barrel shortened to allow the weapon to fit in a purse. Glory had compensated for the gun’s lesser stopping power by notching the lead tips of her bullets. When fired, the slugs would mushroom and then flatten on impact. They could take a man’s arm off at the shoulder.

Glory’s face was heavily powdered. She began to add even more rouge to her already bright pink cheeks. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair was drawn back and gathered in a chignon of ringlets at the nape of her neck. The cloying scent of vanilla extract made the interior of the cab almost unbearable. Yet it was necessary. If she intended to pass for a whore, she had to look—and smell—the part. She wrinkled her nose, breathed in the overpowering perfume, and sneezed.

She hoped Sam Dollard would smell her. She wanted him to catch her aroma through the closed door of his hotel room and believe it was a whore waiting to come in. He wouldn’t suspect a thing until she pulled the Colt from her drawstring bag and handed him a set of manacles.

Glory glanced out at the snow-blanketed streets of the city and noted men of every conceivable station scurrying through the amber pools of light spreading from each streetlamp and disappearing into the deepening shadows. Where were they bound? For hearth and home—or a game of faro at the nearest saloon? Everyone had a story to tell, her ma had once said. Glory’s was simple. She was young and pretty, and she hunted men for the bounty on their heads.

The driver, Burt Olsen, turned and looked in through the cab window at his passenger. He envied the man who would receive her favors tonight. There weren’t many truly beautiful women in a rough town like Denver. He pulled the collar of his woolen coat up around his neck, then with his right hand cracked the tip of his long-handled whip over the heads of his matched bay mares. The animals increased their pace and trotted swiftly through the street.

Glory relaxed and let her mind wander. Sam Dollard wasn’t just a bastard, she thought, he was a sorry bastard. The seven-hundred-dollar price the state of Kansas had put on Dollard’s head for murder of a sheriff didn’t mean near as much to Glory Doolin as the fact that Dollard had stopped at a hardscrabble farm long enough to rape a young bride and leave her a widow. Glory, on Dollard’s trail, had missed him by a day. She’d stayed to help out all she could before hitting the trail again. It had brought her to this snowshrouded street in Denver.

Glory pulled her furred cape around her shoulders as the carriage rolled to a stop in front of a three-story brick building. A sign in bold black letters proclaimed: NUGGET HOUSE. The hotel sat on a busy thoroughfare crowded with dance halls and saloons full of ranch hands, bull whackers, miners, and farmers.

Burt Olsen climbed down from his seat and walked around to open the door. He touched the narrow brim of his hat.

Here you go, miss. He took Glory’s hand and assisted her out of the carriage. He was surprised when she pressed three silver dollars into the palm of his hand.

Wait for me, Glory said.

It’s mighty cold, Olsen dryly observed, pulling up his coat collar. He grinned as Doolin added another silver coin to those in his hand. ’Course I’ve lived in snow all my life. Ain’t froze yet. He nodded toward the mares standing obediently at the stone hitching post as if they’d already been tethered. The animals kept their heads down. Snow dusted their coats.

I won’t be long, Glory said.

The driver chuckled and kicked at the hard-packed wheel-rutted earth. Heck, ma’am. For the likes of you I’d wait till the icicles hung off’n my chin and I looked like Jack Frost. He handed the dollars back to Glory, except one. For the horses, he explained. His broad, homely features split in a good-natured grin.

Why, Mr. Olsen, you’re a romantic, Glory said. The driver turned away to hide his blush. He took a couple of canvas oat bags from under his bench seat and brought them around to his mares.

Glory stepped up onto the boardwalk and started toward the door of the hotel. A figure stepped out of the shadowed alley and moved swiftly toward the young woman. Her right hand closed around the gun in her purse.

Repent, ye fallen angel, cried an old man dressed in the attire of a minister. But his black frock coat and threadbare trousers looked well lived-in. The man’s long silvery hair was matted with grime and stuck out in all directions like Medusa’s snakes. The wrath of God shall be visited upon those who follow the depraved path, who sell their flesh for coin and lead others into sin. Woe to thee, O sinner. Woe to thee.

Glory relaxed her grip on the gun in her purse and tried to continue on past the street preacher. The prophet caught her by the arm and thrust a battered Bible in front of her and opened it to a particular section. Read thou what has befallen Sodom. Learn for yourself what sin has wrought. Great is the wrath of Jehovah and terrible is his swift punishment. Read! Read, O soiled nightingale, lest you lose your divine soul.

The old man reeked of hemp now that he stood close. Glory had no use for zealots, especially ones crazy from the Mexican weed. She was about to brush him aside when a scrap of paper caught her attention in the holy book.

In the glare of a streetlamp she was able to read the crudely scrawled message: "Dollard in Room 14."

She looked up at the street prophet and through his mask of grime and dirt she recognized Jaco Roberts, the man to whom she had paid fifty dollars to learn the exact whereabouts of the fugitive Sam Dollard.

Roberts snapped the book shut and, rolling his eyes up into his head, began to speak in tongues. He lurched past and continued down the walkway. Glory glanced over her shoulder at Burt Olsen, who appeared ready to come to her aid. She waved him off and entered the hotel.

No sooner had Glory vanished from sight than Olsen noticed the street preacher whirl around and, shedding the guise of decrepititude, trot back to the hotel’s entrance. He rubbed the moisture from the window in the door, peered in for a moment, and then hurried inside.

Olsen scratched his neck beneath his muffler and wondered whether or not he should stick his nose into the situation. After all, none of this was his affair. No matter that his passenger had been prettier than a springtime in the Rockies. No matter …

Aw, hell, he muttered, poised between a north wind and trouble.

The hall on the second floor was bathed in the smoky amber light of oil lamps set on tables along the woodpaneled corridor. Chromolithographs depicting the Tower of London, various English frigates, and London Bridge adorned the walls.

Glory Doolin emerged from the main stairway and paused a moment to allow her vision to adjust to the diminished light. To her left were rooms numbered one through seven; to her right, another stairway and rooms eight through fourteen.

Sam Dollard’s room was at the end of the hall. Nothing to do now but finish what she had come to do. The clerk downstairs had assured Doolin, whom he took for a prostitute, that the gentleman in fourteen was awaiting her.

The hall was quiet, save for the murmur of voices from behind closed doors, muffled conversations, and softly, a woman’s sobs of pain or bliss or both.

Glory lifted the hem of her skirt and started down the hall. Tension formed a knot in her gut. She tred a narrow pathway worn in the faded maroon rug that played out halfway down the hall in a fringe of winecolored strands.

How the hell could you draw that third queen? a man complained in a booming voice that rattled door number nine.

Glory’s right hand caught the Navy Colt in her purse, on pure reflex, and remained there. The door at the end of the hall loomed gray and solid, like some massive headstone without a name, only a number. The tightness in her gut was a familiar feeling; it didn’t bother her. In fact, she used such nervousness. Something else bothered her as she reached the end of the hall and raised a perfumed wrist to bang her hand against door fourteen.

A premonition of disaster that the memory of a young Kansas widow overrode.

She knocked on the door, the noise disturbing the empty silence of the hall.

Ah’m here, honey. Come all the way across town from Ma Crosby’s, Glory said in the lilting tones of a jaded coquette. And Ah’m just frozen to the bone and need someone to come warm me up.

Nothing.

Time flows like molasses in winter. And then the shifting and scrape of an iron bolt sliding back. The creak of hinges and the whisper of wood against the frame as the door opens … behind her.

Glory whirled as the first gunshot boomed in the hall. The slug seared her shoulder and left a streak that burned like molten metal on her flesh.

Glory bounced off the closed door behind her as a short broad-shouldered figure stepped from the dark doorway, his gun spewing flame. Another slug ripped into her side. Glory gasped, the impact knocking the wind out of her. She slid to the floor, feeling the blood run down her arm and side. Sam Dollard turned and ran.

The doors in the hallway remained conspicuously closed as the gunman tore down the hall to the stairway. Glory could barely make him out as she struggled to raise the gun still in her cloth purse. Dollard was accosted by a raggedy wraith of a man at the top of the stairs.

Is she finished? Jaco Roberts asked of the gunman. I won’t live to spend a dime. She’ll know I sold her out. Tell me she’s dead.

Dollard shoved the false preacher aside and darted down the stairs, for one brief second outlined in the light from below. Then he vanished.

Jaco Roberts removed his flat-crowned hat and brought a pearl-handled derringer out of the crown.

Glory … he softly called, his eyes adjusting to the dimly lit hall.

Glory made no reply. She knew she was hurt bad, that Sam Dollard had escaped, she might die, and here was the man directly responsible. Jaco was a wretched little man, without scruples—she should have known better than to trust him.

Her right arm trembled as she braced herself, hoping to God she had the strength to cock the weapon, to pull the trigger.

Glory … Ah, Jaco said, spying her against the wall, a broken rag doll in a bloody dress, but alive, holding her purse out to him. Offering him money to spare her life? Your money was good, but his was better, Jaco said, raising the derringer. He shrugged. The purse is mine anyway. Looks like I’ll end this night a rich man, he added with a grin, and reached for the drawstring purse.

Glory fired. The flattened slug ripped apart the handbag, obliterated the fingers from Jaco’s outstretched hand, and slapped him between the eyes. Roberts toppled backward in a spray of crimson and landed on his back with his arms and legs outstretched and face frozen in death’s blank stare.

Glory slumped forward. She heard the clatter of boots on the stairway and felt the floor shudder as another man approached. If it was Sam Dollard, there was nothing she could do about it. Glory didn’t have the strength to bring her revolver to bear.

She tensed, waiting for the shot that would finish her. Come on, get it over with, you bastard, she thought.

Suddenly two strong arms encircled her in a rough grasp, and her head settled against a thickly muscled shoulder. She smelled sweat and horses and hard work on the man.

Good God, miss. Who done this to you? The voice and the smell belonged to Burt Olsen.

A door opened from one of the other rooms, some brave soul choosing at last to risk life and limb.

Get a doctor here. Move, damn you! Olsen shouted. He continued to wrap Glory in his fatherly embrace. Hold on, miss. I sent for help. Hold on.

Glory tried to thank him. At least she thought it. Things were darker now, harder to see, harder to think. But she had to speak, to tell Burt a name, in case the worst happened.

What’s that, miss? Olsen said, lowering his ear to the woman’s mouth.You want me to what? … Yeah, I know the place. Who do I ask for, who do you want me to get?"

Glory’s features bunched as the numbness faded and white-hot pain coursed the length of her side, from shoulder to toes. She was losing consciousness, the world was spinning. She seemed to be looking at Burt Olsen as if from the bottom of a well. His voice was a garbled echo now, calling to her. She knew what he was asking, what he had to know, the name of the man she needed.

Tumbling helplessly into the abyss, Glory summoned the last of her fading strength and screamed his name. It reached the hall as a whisper.

Cole … Anthem.

1

MONTANA TERRITORY, 1876

There were two things Cole Tyler Anthem especially hated on that bitter cold afternoon in mid-March. One was Sam Dollard, the scout for the Army survey detail, a man Cole believed had led them into a Cheyenne ambush. The other was the chill north wind that numbed his fingers and caused him to fumble with the cartridges as he slid them into the chamber of his Yellowboy Winchester. He cursed the day he had hired on as wrangler for Doc Fleming’s survey crew. Cole had only taken the job to keep track of Dollard, who was now wanted by the law in Kansas and Colorado. Posters out of Denver claimed attempted murder. Attempted , hell. He’s getting us all killed today, Cole thought as he ducked a red-tipped arrow arcing toward him. It thwacked into the makeshift barricade of timber Cole was hiding behind. Kill us all, he thought aloud as he stared at the mass of Red Shield warriors streaming out of the wooded hillside.

The Red Shields were one of the most feared of all the Cheyenne warrior societies, and certainly the most fearsome-looking. They colored their flesh with red war paint and smeared the hooves of their mounts as well. Their war shields were crimson-tinted hide, and several carried twelve-foot-long spears, the blades blood-red. The braves wore buffalo hats, the horns also tipped with what looked to be dried blood. Such warriors took no wives, had no families. They lived only for